N Korea's Kim Jong Il may promote son

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Seoul - North Korea's ruling communist party has finally set a date for its biggest convention in decades, an apparent indication that the regime may be ready to give the ageing leader's son a key position that will pave the way for his succession.

Delegates to the ruling Workers' Party will meet in Pyongyang on September 28 to select their "supreme leadership body," the official Korean Central News Agency said on Tuesday.

The conference will be the party's first major gathering since the landmark 1980 congress where then 38-year-old Kim Jong Il made his own political début with an appearance that confirmed he was in line to succeed his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, as his nation's leader.

Kim Jong Il took control of North Korea when his father died of heart failure in 1994 in what was communism's first hereditary transfer of power.

Now 68 and reportedly in poor health two years after suffering a stroke, Kim is believed to be prepping his third and youngest son, Kim Jong Un, for a similar father-to-son power transition.

But as with most things related to the so-called Hermit Kingdom nothing has been officially confirmed by North Korean officials. The regime is so secretive that outside observers often are left to read between the lines of vague state media dispatches and analyse satellite photos to divine what's going on.

Analysts say Kim Jong Un may quietly be appointed to top party posts at next week's convention in a key step in the succession process that will not be announced in state media.

Lame duck

"I believe North Korea has decided to give the successor an official title but not to make it public to the outside world" because publicising the appointment could make Kim Jong Il a lame-duck leader, said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the Seoul-based University of North Korean Studies.

Tuesday's state media report gave no explanation for why the much-anticipated convention, initially set for early September, had been delayed.

Analysts say internal debate among the party elite over whether to publicise Kim Jong Un's political appointment to the outside world, as well as concern about recent devastation from flooding and a deadly typhoon, likely prompted the regime to postpone the nation's biggest political meeting in 30 years.

Discussion over what economic reform the regime should announce during the party conference may also have contributed to the delay, said Kim Yong-hyun of Dongguk University.

Little is known about Kim Jong Un, said to be in his late 20s and schooled in Switzerland. He has never been mentioned in state media, and there are no confirmed photos of him as an adult.

He has two older brothers, Jong Nam and Jong Chol. But Kenji Fujimoto, who says he was Kim Jong Il's sushi chef for more than 10 years, wrote in a memoir that it was the youngest who was most like his father, ruthless and competitive even as a child.

South Korean intelligence officers believe Pyongyang has launched a propaganda campaign promoting the son with songs and poems. He's already being hailed as the "Young General" and "Our Commander," with soldiers and workers pledging allegiance to the son on his birthday in January, South Korean media have said, citing unidentified sources in North Korea.

False rumour

The process, however, is shrouded in secrecy, evidenced by the fact that South Korean officials didn't even know how to spell the son's name until last year.

Earlier this week, former US President Jimmy Carter said Chinese Premier Wen Jiaobao told him that Kim Jong Il disputed the prospective promotion of his youngest son as a "false rumour" - underscoring the difficulty of reading the isolated regime.

"I was amazed when he made that statement," Carter told The Associated Press in a phone interview on Monday. "He said that Kim Jong Il made a flat statement that his succession story was a false Western rumour."

Carter made a rare trip to Pyongyang last month to secure the release of an imprisoned American but didn't meet Kim, who was in China at the time.

Next week, delegates are expected to elect new party leaders to fill spots left vacant for years. It's not clear which party position Kim Jong Un might take in what would be his first known official job.

Yang said he's likely to be elected organisational secretary, the No 2 party job that his father won in 1973 in his path toward becoming the leader.

Kim Yong-hyun of Dongguk University said, however, the son was likely to take a working-level post since he is still so young.

Keen attention is also focused on Kim Jong Il's only sister, Kim Kyong Hui, who in the past two years has been a frequent companion to the leader on field trips to army bases and factories. She currently serves as the political party's department chief for light industry.

Her husband, Jang Song Thaek, has also been rising in stature. Jang was promoted in June to be deputy chair of the powerful National Defence Commission, making him the No 2 official to Kim Jong Il on the regime's top state organ.

The conference is being held amid preparations for the milestone 65th anniversary of the founding of the Workers' Party on October 10, improving relations with Seoul, and attempts by diplomats from neighbouring nations to revive dormant six-nation disarmament negotiations on North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

North Korea walked away from the talks last year in protest over UN Security Council condemnation for launching a long-range rocket, widely seen as a test of its missile technology.

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